The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2021

32 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL disarmament areas. In sketching out these challenges in the nuclear field in the following, I note that many of the sugges- tions could also be relevant to other fields such as chemical weapons and biosecurity. Where We Find Ourselves During the last four years, the Trump administration has withdrawn or threatened to withdraw from a whole series of nuclear and nonnuclear agreements, leaving only New START hanging by a thread. In addition to that long-avowed opponent of arms control agreements, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, a number of respected arms control theorists and practitioners have referred to the “end of arms control” (Linton Brooks) or declared that “disarmament is at a dead end” (Frank Rose). The latter group, however, is by no means giving up on either the desirability or feasibility of nuclear arms control. Those experts are instead expressing pessimism about the future of traditional, legally binding treaties limiting specific nuclear weapons categories, as typified by New START, because of changed geopolitical conditions and the surge of great power competition. The increasing difficulty of mustering the necessary 67 votes to obtain advice and consent for treaty ratification in a polar- ized U.S. Senate and the ease of presidential withdrawal from ratified treaties without any congressional debate or approval also complicate arms control negotiations. It impels any administration to draw on a range of mechanisms to achieve more stable and secure future nuclear arrangements. Further souring the prospects for Senate ratification of potential new treaties is Russia’s record of noncompliance with a number of conventional and nonconventional arms treaties. Not so fast, argues one of our foremost nuclear practitioner- scholars, Rose Gottemoeller, who believes that we can and should aim not only at extending New START (which she nego- tiated) but seek to negotiate a follow-on agreement with Rus- sia. Gottemoeller acknowledges the tortuous nature of securing advice and consent to ratification for New START, but she argues that a legally binding agreement confers a higher status domestically, as well as with the negotiating partner and the international community. The process itself, she maintains, strengthened the treaty and was educational for both the public and Congress, which called for an unprec- edented amount of testimony and required answers to its concerns. (Critics grumble, however, that the necessity for rounding up the necessary GOP votes for New START allowed congressional opponents to demand an even higher price tag for the subsequent U.S. nuclear modernization program, tabbed at around $1.2 trillion.) The difficulties of traditional treaties notwithstanding, most agree on the broader context (and that includes many Republicans and Democrats, practitioners and academics), which is this: • We are in an era of increased great power competition. • We need to find the means to engage China in nuclear arms control. • Future arms control should draw from a menu of legally binding treaty regimes, strategic stability dialogues, confidence building and risk reduction measures, reciprocal unilateral measures (such as the sweeping Presidential Nuclear Initiatives of the George H.W. Bush administration), and other bilateral and multilateral arrangements. With this in mind, the new administration will want to examine how well positioned the State Department is—in terms of staffing, organization and policy processes—to carry out the president’s nuclear agenda. The Importance of Congress and the NSC The partisan divisions within Congress today argue for more rather than less engagement between Capitol Hill and State if we are to restore a semblance of that now quaint order when “politics stopped at the water’s edge.” Whether the incoming administration decides to pursue any new legally ratifiable nuclear treaties or not, State Department officials will want to improve communications with Congress. Aside from the power of ratification, Congress has extensive legislative and budgetary means to support or curtail future arms control arrangements and to determine the degree of funding and scope of our nuclear arsenal. Not only should State policy leadership interact formally with Congress, but individual officers should cultivate relation- ships with members and staffers who are usually overwhelmed with the press and range of issues with which they deal. They welcome briefings from State Department experts, especially in relatively esoteric fields such as nuclear policy. The partisan divisions within Congress today argue for more rather than less engagement between Capitol Hill and State.